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Cascada’s ‘Glorious’ new single

Cascada, who has broken through over the years with a few tracks in the U.S., is making waves overseas with their latest track, “Glorious,” which is a catchy taste of dance-pop from the group that brought us such gems as “Evacuate the Dancefloor.” For those who just sort of thought they disappeared after “Dancefloor,” it’s a bit more complicated than that; “Glorious” proves to be a high point, and a return to form, for Natalie Horler and producers Manian and Yanou.

After the success of “Evacuate the Dancefloor,” the album of the same name came out, but, while the album was their best effort to date (at least in my opinion, as I said in a review a few years ago), it didn’t perform like the previous efforts. Some didn’t like the Lady Gaga-like turn for the group. They took tentative steps while working towards the next album, releasing a few singles to try to build excitement.

The resulting tracks didn’t sound much different than “Dancefloor,” and didn’t really do much either here or abroad. “Pyromania” and “Night Nurse” had robotic male vocals, start-stop beats that weren’t clones but might as well have been, and still sounded like tracks left off Lady Gaga’s albums. It’s not to say they weren’t catchy, but it began to feel like a group in crisis.

This led to the release of “San Francisco,” the track that preceded the release of “Original Me.” The track may have been the final straw for Robbins Entertainment, their at-the-time label, who parted ways, citing creative differences (Robbins’ team had been instrumental in puttings tracks like “Everytime We Touch” and “What Hurts the Most” on their plate, which turned out to be some of their biggest hits).

The biggest problem with “San Francisco” was it felt derivative again, this time of Katy Perry (“California Girls”) or Ke$ha (“TiK ToK”), or both, depending on you who ask; the latter two songs cited were produced by the same producer, who sort of cribbed himself. The mash-up above is one of many on YouTube that illustrate the problem and how alike they sound. Again, the song itself was pretty good, but it just didn’t do the group justice due to the derivitive nature.

The album was ultimately released digitally in the U.S., but there wasn’t much movement there, nor for two bridge singles last year. The first, “Summer of Love,” above, was more of a straight-ahead track that overall works, but the second, “Rhythm of the Night,” a sort of re-imagining/remake of the Corona 1990 hit, seemed to de-emphasize Horler in favor of a Flo Rida-style reworking, which didn’t really work for the group.

So that now brings us to “Glorious,” a song that will serve as Germany’s entry in the Eurovision contest later this month. The song is among their best in terms of catchiness, and puts the focus firmly back on Horler, where it belongs. It’s unfortunate that, because of their record label issues in the U.S., there’s less of a chance people will notice, but fans of Cascada should check out their recent output on iTunes; there’s things to like there.